03.07.06
Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles
I haven’t updated in a while. The astute might notice that this coincides suspiciously with my acquiring World of Warcraft. Interestingly, I have only played WoW about 25% of the time I’ve been using my computer, which is probably why I’m only level 24 after 3 weeks of play. This post will not be about World of Warcraft. This post will be about Darwinia.
I purchased it for 25 dollars this weekend (5 of those being Danish taxes), with an extraordinarily good conscience. By buying Darwinia, I have supported two new trends in PC gaming which I hope will prevail and become the norm within long:
1) Online sales.
2) Independent game studios.
As an aspiring game developer, few things would please me more than removing retail stores entirely from the equation. As I read recently in PC Gamer UK (page 135, issue 159, March 2006) about a game developer who had recently formed a studio: “The traditional publishers he spoke to offered contracts where he could expect less than three pounds royalty from every game sold in stores for £30 a pop. Our source then met an online distributor. Here the business model was very different: by charging customers just £12 per game, the developer would recoup £7 per game sold.” Of course the only way for this model to become the standard mode of business is for people to make use of it.
Secondly, Introversion is an independent game studio, they aren’t owned or controlled by a publisher unlike most other game studios. This means they have the freedom to create some very unique games, which is exactly what Darwinia is. I bought the game over Valve’s Steam system, and apart from the annoying validity check every time I start the game, this has been a very painless process.
So I opened up the game with a very smug feeling that I had contributed in a small way to the eventual demise of games retailers, and found what is currently my favourite game. World of Warcraft is great of course, but playing Darwinia is just a far less masochistic experience. So far, it hasn’t actually been possible to fail a mission (granted, I’m only 6-7 missions into the game), it’s all a matter of nailing the proper strategy to exterminate your enemies - various forms of a nasty computer virus. There are no “kill 6 of these creatures, 6 of these other creatures, 12 of these creatures, and then this guy” missions, which I think make up at least half the quests in World of Warcraft. There is no running for 15 minutes to get to your quest and back again. Nor are there any instances or elite quests where you have to find 3-4 other people to help you out, and it is quite impossible to get “ganked“. And then Darwinia is just surprisingly beautiful and so original in terms of both visuals and gameplay that it makes me giggle with thrill. Even the soundtrack is kinda neat in spite of not containing any distorted guitar at all.
In terms of story, there is something about the setup that makes me really want to help the poor computer genius Dr. Sepulveda who is watching his life’s work being annihilated by a computer virus. Perhaps a bond of suffering? I’ve been there, man. The Darwinians of course are amusing and cute and all that, but I don’t really feel much for them. Yet, at least. I’m mainly concerned with helping Sepulveda out, even if he is just a slightly distorted webcam output in the lower left bottom of my monitor.
It’s fun, and I think you should buy it right now. From Steam. Come on, it doesn’t bite. I dare you.
Darwinia
